Four weeks, in order. Week 1 plugs the fastest-paying flows. Week 2 wins the second purchase. Week 3 reactivates the quiet buyers and cleans the list. Week 4 layers campaigns and SMS on top, then pulls your baseline numbers. Run it in sequence. The sequence is doing most of the work.
I built this because most retention audits hand you a 40-item backlog and no priority. A backlog is not a plan. This is a plan. Every item is sequenced by payback speed, so if you stall halfway you've still banked the money that pays back fastest.
One framing rule before you start. Flows are set once and earn forever. Campaigns are work every week. So flows go first, campaigns go last, and you leave SMS alone until the email machine is actually running. Klaviyo's 2025 benchmark data is the reason for that order: automated flows generate around 41% of total email revenue from about 5.3% of sends, with revenue per recipient roughly 18x higher than one-off campaigns. (Source: Klaviyo 2025 Benchmark Report, AMER, klaviyo.com/marketing-resources/ecommerce-benchmarks. Vendor benchmark, directional, verify. Skews toward sophisticated Klaviyo customers and varies by AOV, category, and list health.)
A word on who this is for. If you already run a real lifecycle program, the value here is not "set up a welcome flow." You have one. The value is the discipline most teams drop under deadline pressure: discount-ladder restraint, branching post-purchase off delivery instead of order date, the sunset gate inside winback, and contribution-margin LTV instead of revenue LTV. That's where the leaked revenue actually sits.
Every week below has a goal, the build items in order, the trap that kills most attempts, and a "done when" line so you know it shipped instead of sitting half-built in draft mode.
Treat the four weeks as gates. Don't open Week 2 until Week 1's flows are live and pulling. A half-built welcome flow earns nothing.
Goal: get the welcome flow and the three abandonment flows live. These are the highest revenue-per-recipient automations you own, and they capture intent you already paid for.
These two flow families are where flow revenue concentrates. In Klaviyo's 2025 data the welcome flow averages about $2.65 RPR and a ~1.97% placed-order rate, and the abandoned-cart flow is the single highest-RPR flow at about $3.65 RPR, ~3.33% placed-order, and ~50.5% open. (Source: Klaviyo 2025 Benchmark Report, AMER, klaviyo.com/marketing-resources/ecommerce-benchmarks and klaviyo.com/blog/abandoned-cart-benchmarks. Vendor benchmark, directional, verify.)
The job is to convert a fresh subscriber into a first order while intent is highest, and to establish who you are before you ever discount.
Trigger and guardrails:
| # | Send timing | Job of the email |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Immediate | Deliver the incentive (code or PDF), welcome, set expectations for what's coming |
| 2 | +1 day | Brand story, founder reason-to-care, what makes you different |
| 3 | +2 to 3 days | Best-sellers or "where to start" plus social proof (reviews, UGC) |
| 4 | +4 to 6 days | Incentive reminder with urgency ("code expires") plus objection handling (shipping, returns, guarantee) |
The operator move most teams miss: a discount in Email 1 lifts first-order conversion, but it also trains discount-seeking that follows the customer for life. If you have the margin and the brand, run an incentive-light welcome that sells identity first. Chubbies is the cited example of a personality-led welcome that sells the brand before the product. Glossier is the community and founder-story version. Copy the mechanic, leave their numbers alone. (Brand examples illustrate the mechanic only.)